For some of us — those who took notice of a May 2022 Universal announcement explaining that, as her next trick, actor-director Elizabeth Banks would be making a movie “inspired by the true story” of “a 500-pound apex predator” doing a “staggering” amount of blow — the wait is about to be over. Cocaine Bear is coming! Cocaine Bear is almost here. Banks’s movie opens in theaters this Friday, and I propose we use that time to separate fact from fiction in Cocaine Bear’s real-life tale. Did a bear once get its mitts on some coke that dropped from the sky and into a forest in Georgia? Yes. Did things unfold in the bloody manner Cocaine Bear would have us believe? No.
